When Peter and Ally Buckley brought home identical triplets Chloe, Eliza and Bronte two years ago they immediately colour coded them to make sure they could tell them apart.
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But after initially calling them all Chloe big brother Fraser soon became the one who found identifying them the most easy.
Dad found it the hardest so each morning Mrs Buckley would hold one of his sisters up at a time and play Pick The Sister.
Mrs Buckley admits it was daunting at first and hard to keep up with looking after three babies at once but she quickly joined a Facebook group of triplet mums, established by the Australian Multiple Birth Association (AMBA), and the support of other people in a similar situation proved invaluable.
She has since become heavily involved in helping new multiple birth mums by sharing what she has learned from her own experience.
She is now the AMBA’s Higher Order Multiples (HOM) coordinator for NSW.
And multiple birth mums in the Wollongong and Southern Sydney AMBA branches soon see how she can do that with some authority.
Her calm approach is so effective she now has three really good sleepers who average 12 hours a night.
The two year old triplets are so good the Buckleys even managed to take them on a family holiday to Canada last Christmas.
Mrs Buckley said they managed that and much of the last two years with the help of family and friends.
And that is important because research shows that mothers of multiples have almost twice the risk of developing depression from a number of factors, including social isolation.
Fathers and partners can also experience mental health problems and that is why AMBA runs Multiple Birth Awareness Week which just happens to coincide with a major annual birthday event in the Buckley household.
The Buckley triplets celebrated their second birthday leading into the week which is all about raising awareness about the support available for families with multiples.
In helping other mothers expecting more than one baby at a time Mrs Buckley explains how important such support is.
And in her case she even recognises how much help Fraser, 4, has been.
So much so that when his three sisters wake up each morning they go looking for their big brother to give him a hug.
And he knows how special it is to have identical triplets as baby sisters.
The latest research shows that the probability of an Australia couple naturally conceiving identical triplets is around one in 76,269.
Mrs Buckley really enjoys getting involved in multiple birth groups particularly those with other triplet mums who she regularly catches up with.
‘‘It is beautiful,’’ she said.
‘‘We bring all the kids so they can interact. It can be a little crazy but its fun. We need a fenced in are and a lot of high chairs. When it is food time we need to line them all up. We put them all in a big line or big circle and sit in the middle.’’
